CANVAS BLUES
Vignettes Regarding the Artwork of Brendon Kotes

XVII: Present

Mr. Livesey paid for lunch with a black card and a dismissive wave at Brendon’s ten. Then they walked back to Brendon’s studio, suit pants and painted-splattered jeans clashing. The shadows grew longer than normal, the cumulous clouds fat and lumpy enough to cut the heat.

Upstairs, Brendon gave Mr. Livesey a tour of his studio, murmuring shortened explanations of his display paintings as Mr. Livesey gazed on with narrowed eyes that missed nothing. Not the vase of knives on the background table in the alien ballet studio, What Pointe. Not the single opening between the glass in the Mirror of Mazes. Not the smoke-swirled backward words in the reflected ponds of Lake Country Crossing.

“I presume no one has ever been affected by these paintings.”

“Of course not.”

Mr. Livesey turned away from the last canvas and Brendon let the sheet fall back into place. “So this car painting, the one for your friend, is the only picture you know had the same effect as Erikson’s?”

“I don’t even know if it had the same effect. It probably just altered Casey’s dreams, like we thought.”

Mr. Livesey made a sound of quiet disbelief. He wandered over to the workshop side of the studio and perched himself quite comfortably on one of Brendon’s paint-splattered stools. Out of place, a man of order surrounded by chaos, Mr. Livesey still managed to seem capable of wrangling his setting. Wrangling Brendon. Continue reading →